Technology

The A.V. Club reports: Now that Hollywood has officially endorsed the aesthetics of deepfakes with the mangled celebrity faces of the upcoming Cats remake, it seems like there’s no longer anything holding the technology back. Last week, we bore witness to the chilling sight of Michelle Tanner’s baby-sized head playing host to Nick Offerman’s grown man eyes and mustache. And …

Courthouse News reports: When the American Civil Liberties Union used facial recognition software to cross-check 120 California legislators against a database of 25,000 publicly available mug shots, the algorithm falsely identified 26 of the lawmakers as someone who’s been arrested. One such lawmaker was Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, was matched with a mug shot by Amazon’s facial recognition software …

TechCrunch reports: “The future is private.” Clearly, Facebook still has a way to go. Facebook has become the latest tech giant to face scrutiny over its handling of users’ data, following a report that said the social media giant collected audio data and recordings from its users and transcribed it using third-party contractors. The report came from Bloomberg, citing the …

Reuters reports: Oregon has joined a multistate lawsuit to block the merger of U.S. wireless carriers T-Mobile and Sprint, the New York attorney general’s office, which is leading the lawsuit along with California, said on Monday. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia are now seeking to stop the merger, which the states argue is anticompetitive and will cost their …

Courthouse News reports: Rejecting arguments that Facebook users suffered no “concrete harm” by having their facial data mapped and stored, the Ninth Circuit advanced a $35 billion class action against the social media giant Thursday. Facebook sought to swat down the lawsuit last year after U.S. District Judge James Donato ordered it to alert users about an upcoming trial on …

Ars Technica reports: 8chan was able to get back online today despite Cloudflare cutting it off, as operators of the controversial website quickly found a new provider of CDN and DDoS protection services. But as of this writing 8chan is offline again, apparently as a result of a cloud provider cutting off 8chan’s new vendor. 8chan quickly switched its website …

The Verge reports: Just how uncool can Facebook make Instagram and WhatsApp? If exerting more influence over the direction of both apps by installing Facebook executives wasn’t enough, now the social network giant is going to add “Facebook” to their names. Instagram will soon become “Instagram from Facebook” and WhatsApp will turn into “WhatsApp from Facebook.” The company already follows …

The New York Times reports: A software engineer in Seattle hacked into a server holding customer information for Capital One and obtained the personal data of over 100 million people, federal prosecutors said on Monday, in one of the largest thefts of data from a bank. The suspect, Paige Thompson, 33, left a trail online for investigators to follow as …

Roll Call reports Lawmakers and their constituents are fed up with the bombardment of nuisance and scam calls plaguing their cell phones and on Wednesday the House passed a bipartisan measure to combat robocalls. The House voted 429-3 to pass a bill that would require phone companies to offer screening technology to customers at no cost that would identify and …

The Washington Post reports: A wave of fakes purporting to sell or represent Facebook’s not-yet-available Libra currency have swept onto the social-media giant’s platforms, highlighting how the tech firm is struggling to rebuild trust and fight the fraud likely to surround the new financial system. Roughly a dozen fake accounts, pages and groups scattered across Facebook and its photo-sharing app …

USA Today reports:  Credit-reporting company Equifax will pick up the tab in a deal with the Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and 50 states and territories to settle allegations that it did not implement sufficient security measures to protect its network. The deal calls for Equifax to pay at least $575 million, including $300 million for free credit …

The New York Times reports: Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are always watching you — even when you’re browsing pornography websites in incognito mode. Trackers from tech companies like Google and Facebook are logging your most personal browsing details, according to a forthcoming New Media & Society paper, which scanned 22,484 pornography websites. Where that data ultimately goes is not always …

Broadcasting & Cable reports: The House Energy & Commerce Committee has voted unanimously to dramatically raise the per-violation fines for illegal robocalls. That was part of an omnibus bill, the “Stopping Bad Robocalls Act,” which also passed unanimously (48-0)* as part of a markup for a couple dozen bills. The bill, actually a combination of five bills, had passed unanimously …

Reuters reports: Amazon.com Inc has a promotion for U.S. shoppers on Prime Day, the 48-hour marketing blitz that started Monday: Earn $10 of credit if you let Amazon track the websites you visit. The deal is for new installations of the Amazon Assistant, a comparison-shopping tool that customers can add to their web browsers. It fetches Amazon’s price for products …

Wired reports: Late Thursday, President Donald Trump unleashed a three-tweet squall declaring himself “not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies,” and referring to the use of “unregu­lated digital assets” for “drug trade and other illegal activities.” He included Libra in that category, saying the platform “will have little standing or dependability” and would fall prey to similar dependability issues. …

CNET reports: Twitter’s desktop site and its mobile app went offline on Thursday morning, with an error message reading that “something is technically wrong.” The phrase greeted users as they went to tweet or view other users’ tweets. “We are currently investigating issues people are having accessing Twitter,” a company spokesperson told TheWrap. The Twitter rep added the company will …

The New York Times reports: It says volumes about the challenges facing brick-and-mortar stores that the “single biggest initiative” out of Kohl’s this year, according to the national retailer’s chief executive, is that it will now accept and process unwanted orders from Amazon. Kohl’s said on Monday that it was now accepting Amazon returns at its more than 1,100 stores …

ABC News reports: A London-bound flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Boston on Thursday night when a fire broke out on board, authorities said. Flames and smoke appeared to be coming from a passenger seat on Virgin Atlantic Flight 138, after it took off from JFK. The flight crew extinguished the fire as the pilots made an …

Axios reports: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the aircraft maker is having “ongoing conversations” with its airline customers about possible reimbursements following the grounding of its 737 MAX during an interview with Axios’ Mike Allen at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Wednesday. The 737 MAX was grounded worldwide after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people, highlighting concerns about …

The Wall Street Journal reports: McDonald’s is testing voice-recognition software at a drive-through in suburban Chicago. Inside the restaurant, a robot also tosses chicken, fish and fries into vats of oil. Both technologies are meant to shorten customer wait times that executives acknowledge have grown in recent years. McDonald’s also has stopped serving some burgers and given franchisees more control …